June 20

Tad Schmaltz (Michigan) with Alison Peterman (Rochester), Stephan Schmid (Hamburg), and Yitzhak Melamed (JHU)

Book Panel:

The Metaphysics of the Material World

Abstract: This book traces a particular development of the metaphysics of the material world in early modern thought. The route it follows derives from a critique of Spinoza in the work of Pierre Bayle. Bayle charged in particular that Spinoza’s monistic conception of the material world founders on the conception of extension and its modes and parts that he inherited from Descartes, and that Descartes in turn inherited from late scholasticism, and ultimately from Aristotle. After an initial discussion of Bayle’s critique of Spinoza and its relation to Aristotle’s distinction between substance and accident, this study starts with the reconceptualization of Aristotle’s metaphysics of the material world that we find in the work of the early modern scholastic Suárez. This is followed by a consideration of the connections of this version of scholastic conception of the material world to the very different conception that Descartes offered. Especially important is Descartes’s view of the relation of extended substance both to its modes and to the parts that compose it. Finally, there is a consideration of what these developments in Suárez and Descartes have to teach us about Spinoza’s monistic conception of the material world. Of special concern here is to draw on this historical material to reassess Bayle’s critique of Spinoza.

Tad Schmaltz is Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His areas of specialization are the history of early modern philosophy (17th and 18th centuries); the history and philosophy of early modern science; and the relation of philosophy and science to theology in the early modern period. He has as particular research interests the following features of early modern thought: the variety of early modern “Cartesianisms”; the influence of late scholasticism; the nature of the “Scientific Revolution”; substance-mode metaphysics and mereology; and theories of causation and freedom.

Alison Peterman is Associate Professor at the University of Rochester.

Stephan Schmid is Professor of the History of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the Universität Hamburg.

Yitzhak Melamed is Charlotte Bloomberg Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University.

A recording of the session will be made available on the “Downloads” page for some time following the event.

(The “Downloads” page is password-protected, and the password is available to all members of the Spinoza and EMP Workshop email list.)